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The Expendable 100?

The 100 is a show on the CW (formerly WB), into its second season and going strong. As a post-apocalyptic show, featuring a cast of mostly young adults, it’s no wonder that this show is a hit. I certainly have no quarrel with it, although I have noticed some plot holes here and there. Mostly I find the characters to be well-rounded and very humanized. Characters you start out hating end up showing surprising developments that make you love them and yet others take a drastic turn for the worse and you regret having loved them early on in the series. With this sort of approach to the series, I find that the series is less of the teen romance drama that everyone was certainly expecting, and more about survival and the politics, the growth of characters.

You follow the group of 100 teens who were chosen from their home on The Ark (a space station that holds thousands of occupants of different nationalities that managed to escape Earth’s toxic conditions) and sent down to Earth—somewhere no one has been for 97 years. Except they find out that they aren’t the only ones down there. While trying to figure out how to live on their own in the harsh environments that this new, post-apocalyptic Earth provides, they also have to deal with a war breaking out between themselves and the people who have managed to survive on the Earth throughout its transformation from what it was into what it is now.

The series definitely had a solid beginning and comes from an interesting idea. There are certain things about it that have fallen through: it was never explained how the indigenous people of Earth survived during the nuclear fallout; during the first couple of episodes the forest is revealed to glow brightly at night and yet it is never seen again; mutated creatures have been seen, and yet they are never a major plot point or have anything to do with the struggle to live on Earth. There are many subjects that were either dropped after a big scene about it, or just were never covered to begin with. While this doesn’t take away from the story itself, it does limit the viewer’s immersion into the world they have created. The audience should never have to ask questions about the setting, it should just be shown.

However, as these over looked subjects are really just me being nit-picky, I can easily wave them off and happily continue to watch the series. I give The 100 a solid 4.5/5 stars and recommend it to anyone who has a particular liking for the dystopian, post-apocalyptic genre. It’s well-written and definitely different from other shows out there.